April 18, 2008

The six-year arena timetable surfaced in December 2006

Atlantic Yards Report

We sense a great disturbance in The Force... that slacker Norman Oder missed something:

I can't believe I and others missed it, but the news that Forest City Ratner has 6+ years to build the arena--six years after the end of litigation and delivery of the project site via eminent domain--wasn't exactly new.

It was on page 28 of the Modified General Project Plan (Part 2), issued and approved by the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) on 12/8/06. It was not, however, in the General Project Plan issued in July 2006, which got a lot more scrutiny.

However, the other parts of the timetable--that the developer has 12+ years to build Phase 1 and an unspecified time to build Phase 2--were, indeed, first revealed in the recently-surfaced AY State Funding Agreement.

This much is clear: the ESDC, even while approving a plan "anticipated" to be completed in ten years, allowed for six years--including four years of delay resulting from force majeure events or significant financing snags--to build the arena.

So former FCR executive Jim Stuckey's affidavit filed on 4/27/07 in the environmental lawsuit, now on appeal, should be taken with a grain of salt. The petitioners had challenged the project's ten-year timetable, saying the state's environmental review lowballed the impacts of a much longer project.